Guiding Your Students to Make Better Choices

1. Guiding Your Students to Make Better Choices Class Management without the Power Strugglepresented by Darren BarkettNCMSA Spring 2011

2. Before we begin… • Is this session for you? • Have you found the session website? • HelpingTeachersGrow.com/NCMSA

3. By the end of this session… • You will understand your role in creating, preventing, and solving the behavior problems in your classroom. • You will have the groundwork for a behavior system that guides your students to better behavior without a power struggle.

4. What keeps you from teaching? • Bathroom breaks? • Talkative students? • Tardy students? • Students without pencils? Paper? • Students not doing their homework? • Disrespectful students?

5. Whatever it is, you need a system that is firm enough to handle these situations quickly yet flexible enough to cover a diverse range of situations.

6. Pay Now or Pay Later! • Remember this key point. • If you don’t work to guide your students’ behaviors now, you will have to do this later. • Wouldn’t you rather straighten things out now before they are bigger issues?

7. Pay Now or Pay Later! • Don’t avoid the issues! Face them head on! Address them before they even come up in the class! • Let your students know that you’ve thought things out and are ready for whatever they might throw at you!

8. Basic Behaviorism • Rewards vs. punishments • Sample rewards • Fun Fridays, free time (be careful!), lunch in the room watching TV, sitting with another class at lunch, five minutes to listen to music at the end of class • Sample punishments • Isolation, silent lunch, losing minutes from lunch, quiet book work instead of fun activities • Some behaviors require specific responses

9. Classroom Management or Office Referral? • What behaviors should be handled in the classroom? • Tardies, mild disrespect, homework issues, dress code, not being prepared, not following directions

10. Office Referrals… • What behaviors need immediate office referrals? • Fights, harassment, threats, bullying… • If the office referral is your only consequence, you’re not managing your classroom. • There is no outsourcing of your discipline problems!

11. End of Part One • Our next step will take a bit of time. • Consider this an investment. • Are you really ready for this? • It won’t be easy to change your habits…

12. Part Two It’s time to get specific! Let’s create our class management system! It will be worth it!

13. Step by Step • Divide your classroom behaviors into no more than five distinct categories. • Common categories: tardy, not following directions, disrespect, homework, materials, bathroom… • What keeps you from being effective and efficient in the classroom?

14. Step by Step, cont’d. • Take some time to make your list. Remember, simpler is better. Don’t micromanage. Generalize!

15. Teach Your Standards • Take a day for each standard. • Define the behavior. • Model the expected behavior. • Ask questions about the behavior. • Discuss why we should all follow the behavior.

16. Unveil Your System! • I use a mark system to manage behaviors • Spreadsheet with students’ names on left side • Categories of expectations (tardy, NFD, disrespect, etc.) across the top • Anytime a student fails to meet expectations, he or she receives a mark.

17. Your Mark System, cont’d. • Reward time every week (not monthly or quarterly!) • Vary rewards • Set threshold for receiving rewards • Around 90%-95% of your students should be receiving the rewards. If not, you need to troubleshoot what’s not working.

18. Your Mark System, cont’d. • Students who don’t receive the reward aren’t also punished! Very important! • Create a setting for these “frowners” who don’t receive the reward.

19. Tardies • Ask your classes, “Why might it be important to be on time?” • Use your visual aids! • Discuss what it might mean to be on time. • Clearly define what “Being on time” looks like • Ask again, “Why is this important?”

20. Not Following Directions • Blanket category for most of your classroom issues • Refusal to do what you ask • Don’t constantly remind or warn your students – give them a mark! • “The next time I see you doing ______, it is a…”

21. NFD, cont’d. • Give your instructions to an individual or the class, and then if they aren’t followed… • Allows you flexibility in creating new rules within your existing system.

22. Disrespect • Covers behaviors that are slightly more damaging to the classroom environment than simply not following directions. • Cursing, arguing, sassing the teacher, insulting other students, picking on a student, taking a pencil from someone, kicking books or backpacks, speaking rudely to the teacher • Give the mark and move on.

23. Bathrooms! (This one is gold!) • How do you manage this in a way that allows students to use the bathroom when needed but doesn’t encourage time out of class? • Ask the student who wants to go, “Is it worth a mark?” • The student then makes their own decision about whether or not they will use the bathroom.

24. My Golden Bathroom Rule, cont’d. • This removes you from the power struggle and encourages student self-control. • It also prevents that nasty parent phone call…

25. Homework • I don’t assign a lot of homework. • That way, when I do assign it, it darn well better get done! • Students get out their homework at the start of class, and I take three minutes to cruise through the room making sure it’s done. • Not done = mark. • I don’t accept any excuses. I do accept late work and will remove a mark when it is returned.

26. Materials • What materials must students have every day to be successful in your class? • I lend out pencils. It’s a mark until it comes back. • I have books in my class. If a student doesn’t bring theirs, it’s a mark, and they borrow my book. • My textbooks don’t leave the class. If a student needs one, they check it out by signing the board.

27. Pay Now or Pay Later • Consistency will be the biggest factor in your success. • Probably the reason why you are struggling right now is because you are not being consistent. • Don’t remind.

28. Pay Now or Pay Later, cont’d. • Don’t warn. • Don’t plead or explain. • Enforce. Provide consequences. • If a student wants to argue, simply state, “Stay after class and I will gladly explain this to you.”

29. Stay with it! • It will take time for this system to become your “way of doing things.” • Keep at it until it becomes second nature. • Won’t it be nice to have nothing to add to the conversation when the other teachers are complaining about how horrible the students are in their classes? • Good luck!

30. Contact Info • Darren Barkett • Asheville, NC • 828-551-8918 • darrenb@helpingteachersgrow.com